The Colour of Uncertainty
by WackyGoofball
Summary: JB Appreciation Week 2015: Blue. Jaime&Brienne struggle with their new situations in the Red Keep. Both are uncertain about themselves, but they find remedy in each other's presence. Takes up on a scene from the show, but I won't say which. You gotta read it ;) Can be read as a continuation of "Black Silk" and prequel to "Golden Possibility".


Jaime sits on one of the benches in the gardens around the Red Keep. Ever since they arrived here, more or less in one piece, he found himself in an odd flux, caught between embarrassment over the fact that he is no longer the man, the knight he used to be, unable to pour himself a cup of wine without knocking it over, still trying to use his ghost hand instead of his real hand, and something that he is not at all familiar with.

Uncertainty.

Jaime was always a self-conscious boy, a proud man, he has been ever since he can remember. He knew his skills and trained his weaknesses to the point that they no longer stood in the way. He trained hard with the sword, squired, slayed, protected, never yielded. Jaime was the youngest knight to join the Kingsguard _because_ he was never in self-doubt.

But now that he is a man with a limb missing, he finds himself in doubt all of a sudden.

Cersei doesn't even seem to want to look at him unless he wears this fashionable yet useless metal hand with godforsaken ornaments on it.

 _Ornaments_. Brienne didn't stop laughing at this for over a minute when he showed her the thing for the first time.

Well, at least it was good for something then, if only to give her a good laugh at his expenses. Because he had to laugh as well in the end.

 _Ornaments_.

Joffrey has his dear fun at his expenses, too, but that does nothing much to Jaime's self-consciousness. While Joffrey is his, if only in secret, Jaime considers the King a sadistic little brat who wouldn't know how honour is spelled if someone were to write it into his palm to rehearse it again and again.

Father looks at him in a different way, too. And then he said that he should quit the Kingsguard to take over Casterly Rock instead, which really, deeply offended Jaime. It has been a topic of ongoing debate, so Jaime reckons that his father, at some point, seems to take the loss of his hand as a chance to get his will at last, so Jaime has to secure the Lannister lineage now if he wants to or not.

And that only made him revolt ever the harder.

While Jaime values Casterly Rock highly, for it is his home and part of his family's very identity, he can't bring himself to simply give in to this new situation just yet. He doesn't want to rule, doesn't want to be a Lord, seated on a throne or elevated chair to make everyone smaller underneath him, and talk to royals, politicians, merchants, and commoners about affairs of economics, land marks, or trading routes.

Jaime wants to talk about swords, crossbows, battlefields, and matters of guarding people.

He wants to yield a sword, not a sceptre.

The Lord Commander has the feeling that even with the loss of his hand there are still things he can do, must do. That there is still power left in this maimed body. That he can still serve, if only a questionable King, but he feels the need to.

The need to serve.

Not to yield just yet.

Because he saw how much it tore Brienne apart not to be able to serve anymore. After she lost Renly and hence her spot in his Kingsguard, or so he understands now that he knows her better, she felt a deep pit within her, one that Catelyn Stark wanted to fill, but in the end couldn't either.

They learned about the Red Wedding shortly after they arrived in King's Landing. Jaime remembers this moment into every detail, into every fragment.

And the worst fragment was to see Brienne standing there, looking at the person who proclaimed the news, and it seemed as though the sapphires shattered in her eyes, crumbled to shards and left her body broken, every bone, every muscle, every hair, it suddenly seemed to be made of blue, fragile glass that shattered in the face of a Red Wedding.

Jaime also recalls how she tried her best to keep her face stoic, set her jaw, swallowed thickly, but said nothing except for what was required. And he remembers how she sped up once they left, and as she turned on the heel inhaled as though she had been under azure waters for minutes, unable to suck in the much needed air.

He remembers how she wanted to run.

Run away.

Run away from that pain and sorrow and dread.

And he remembers that he held on to her arm out of reflex when she wanted to escape down the hallways, into the shadows. That he made her stay until she breathed again, neither one saying a single word.

Just as he remembers her sapphires, if in shatters, still shining so brightly back at him that the air caught up in his throat as well and almost brought him to choke.

She didn't cry, at least not in his presence, but it was at that instant that Jaime realised how hurtful it is for a knight, if only in spirit, to lose any chance to serve.

Because that was what Lady Catelyn was for her – a chance to serve, likely her last chance to serve. Renly allowed Brienne into his guard because he was seemingly a man who saw past convention for more than one reason, and saw her wealth for what it is, saw her loyalty for the pure thing it is, but then he was ripped away from her, and the only other person who'd take a woman for a guardian these days was a woman, too.

And that woman is dead now as well.

And that is why Jaime can't bring himself to consider himself a Lord yet, because he dreads that he will shatter the same way she did. That he will dissolve until nothing but a golden hand remains of him.

With ornaments.

Suddenly he feels the air moving beside him, bringing him back to the gardens, to the bench, and the wench who plopped down next to him without a word, without prelude or ceremony.

He tends to forget that she doesn't really care to do that around him anymore, after they slept inches apart from each other in mud and grass, and likely piss and faeces at some point, too. Though Jaime is glad for it in a strange way, that she doesn't see the need to stick to convention when around him. Because Brienne is less tensed up when with him, when feeling the security of privacy.

"A good day to you, too, wench," he grins. She rolls her eyes, glancing at the rich gardens, which are way too pretty in her opinion, exhaling.

They make her even uglier.

Brienne rather stays around ugly things. Then she doesn't stand out that much.

"So? What makes you sigh like a walrus?" he goes on with the tease. She punches him in the arm lightly, making Jaime chuckle again.

"I talked to Lady Margaery today," she says after a while.

"I bet she didn't recognise you at first, because you didn't wear an armour," Jaime grins.

In fact, he likes the garment on her now, the brown leather vest with long sleeves and the dress-like tunic underneath, which makes it possible for her to wear breeches and boots without upsetting the populace too much. It was a nice mixture of female and male attributes, and that seems closest to her. A bit of both, something in-between.

Not to mention that he really likes to see blue on her instead of rose.

That colour makes him honestly sick ever since he saw it on her when she fought that bloody bear back in bloody Harrenhal back with this bloody Locke and his bloody companions.

Bloody business, truly.

"She did," Brienne shrugs. "Though Lady Margaery was obviously surprised to see me."

"Did she say something that upset you now or what?" he asks.

"No, it was nothing. I just wanted to tell her about Renly's death. I wanted her to know who killed him," she replies bluntly. "He was her first husband after all."

"Yeah, though I think the curly-haired Loras Tyrell would have been more of his taste to see dressed in silks to wed him," Jaime grins, expecting the blow against his arm, which will surely leave one huge bruise the next morning.

"She cared about him," Brienne insists. "Of that I'm sure."

Brienne strongly believes that there are different kinds of love, and that Margaery loved Renly in her own way, too, just like he loved her to the best of his abilities.

"I reckon I can't argue about the point," Jaime shrugs. "That still doesn't explain what makes you frown more than you do by nature."

"Lady Olenna was with her," she says.

"Oh yes, the Queen of Thornes. I find her intimidating. At some point she seems to be the female version of my father, just that she is a lot more fun, but with the kind of stabbing humour I know only from my brother. At some point I think she would have made a good Lannister, too," Jaime says, tilting his head up to the teal sky with only few clouds passing by.

His body decides that it needs movement, which is why he is to his feet at once, "Care to accompany me for a walk? My legs still seem too used to wandering endlessly, so I have to give them something to do?"

Brienne gets up wordlessly and tags along with him, hands folded in her back.

"So what did Lady Olenna say or do to make you frown the way you do?" Jaime asks again. "Or did she tease you and now she hurt your feelings?"

"No," she replies.

"Then what?" he makes a face.

"She didn't, that is the thing," she replies, her sapphires shining at him a lot brighter than he remembers them to over the last few days.

"You are upset because she didn't give you a nasty comment? I didn't take you for the masochistic type of a woman… though then again, you already tried to scrub your skin off with a brush, so maybe you are after all," Jaime makes a face, but then shakes his head as images of her naked body dance before his eyes.

"She seemed very much delighted to see the woman who's beaten Loras in a melee, I don't know," she shrugs.

Brienne had rehearsed all morning before she went to see Lady Margaery. She knew what she wanted to say, after she had said the words again and again, but when she wanted to start her speech, the seasoned woman from the Highgardens interrupted her and smiled at her and said these things that left Brienne blinking.

"That story always is a knee-slapper. The Seven Hells, I could burst out laughing each time I envision the little rose lying in the dust, crying for his sister, or his dear Renly to help him up while you tower above him," Jaime argues.

At some point it really is a pity that he never saw that. While Jaime got to see her fight against the three Stark men with such a brute force and fierceness that it rendered even someone like Jaime Lannister speechless, he _really_ would have liked to see her fight off all those men from Renly's army, one by one, just to push the curly-haired boy-girl from the Highgardens into the dust, only to tear off her helmet and reveal herself as a woman.

That surely was priceless.

"He didn't cry for his sister, or Renly," Brienne argues vehemently. "He fought honourably… he just yielded in the end."

"He shrieked, c'mon, admit it already," Jaime grins.

"Maybe," she shrugs, making the Lord Commander laugh out loud once.

"See? So it's no surprise to me that Olenna took some pleasure in it. She is a tough woman, that I know," Jaime argues. "So to hear that a woman taught Loras to be more of a man is not surprisingly entertaining for her."

"It's something else that she said. I don't know," Brienne shrugs her broad shoulders, pursing her plump lips.

"And what did she say?" he asks.

"Nothing that has to concern you," she replies promptly.

Brienne never should have mentioned it, but Jaime always draws the words out of her for _some_ reason. The tall woman rather stays dull and mute. She knows that she tends to be too bad at lying, so whenever she opens her mouth, the truth will inevitably travel out.

And some truths should stay where they are, inside, not out in the world, not even a secluded part of the gardens of the Red Keep.

"Now you lured me out with Olenna having fun at Loras' expenses. Now you can't leave me hanging here without the punchline. That's cheap, woman," Jaime argues.

"I don't have to say anything about the matter," she insists.

"You want to say it, admit it to yourself. You want me to know, or else you wouldn't have sought me out," Jaime argues.

"I seek you out because you are the only one other than Lady Margaery I know. Who else am I supposed to talk to here?" she retorts. "I don't make the acquaintance of people easily, you know that better than anyone else."

"True, you and small-talk are two things that just don't belong together," Jaime is bound to agree.

It's strangely fascinating to watch her and her uncertainty. Brienne had dinner with them a few times, as Jaime's guest of honour, or so he insisted. He had to try hard not to laugh the way she leaned forward in her seat, opened her mouth like a fish to say something, seemingly speaking the words to herself a few times before she dared to say them aloud, but then someone else said something and she shifted back in her seat, returning to muteness after all.

Jaime imagines this to be a remnant from her youth days. He can't help but envision her doing this ever since a young girl, trying to fit in, but failing, trying to make conversation, but thinking too much instead of just doing it, and thus end up failing.

At some point Brienne is as uncertain as he is, just that she finds certainty in her physical abilities while this is the source of his uncertainty in turn.

They seem to be two sides of the same coin, at least in that regard.

"So since I am the only source of company for you, you might just as well tell me," he argues. "You know that I wouldn't tell anyone. Already due to the fact that no one really cares."

"She called me marvellous," Brienne blurts out, the word 'marvellous' rolling from the tip of her tongue as though it was a hair that caught in her mouth – and she tries to get the alien object back out.

Jaime blinks, stopping in his tracks for a moment.

"Just my thought," she snorts, looking at him, her sapphire eyes dimming at once.

Brienne guesses that Lady Olenna is just so good at sarcasm that a dull woman like her takes it seriously.

 _Marvellous._

 _Absolutely singular._

While Brienne believes the second part, for she knows no woman like herself, she is by no means sure about the first part.

Or no, she is certain that this must either be a huge misunderstanding on her part, having missed the sarcasm, or Lady Olenna had a fleeting moment of madness.

Brienne of Tarth is not marvellous.

She marvels.

She doesn't get marvelled at.

"So that is what upset you now?" he frowns. "That she made you a compliment?"

"It sounded like one, but it couldn't be, because it is plainly a lie. And that is what upsets me. I know why I usually stay away from royals. Their words are misleading," Brienne insists, letting out a grunt at last to make her frustration known.

If only people said what they meant.

Then maybe Brienne would feel a bit more confident to talk to other people.

But whenever she talked to someone other than her father, Renly, Catelyn, or Jaime she didn't know the lie from the truth, had the feeling that she was talking to mirrors instead of people.

And that is what made her purse her lips each time.

She listens, but she doesn't talk.

Because she can't read these people – and Brienne is too careful to trust words she cannot tell apart from a lie.

"Did it ever cross your mind that she was, you know, just being honest?" he looks at her, caught between amusement and a bit of pity for her.

The woman can't take any sign of affection for granted, or so it seems.

But then again, Jaime can hardly blame the wench for it. She told him a few tales, about roses in the dust, and people making bets about who'd get her maidenhead first. If you are put through something like that, it seems hard to trust people to show affection for you.

Jaime always knew his family's affection. He always knew Cersei's affection… at least until recently. To think that this woman, who is still very young, has such a pessimistic outlook on life is actually rather sad.

Especially since it leaves her azure eyes dimmer and dimmer.

Brienne looks at him, her eyebrows wrinkling uncontrollably, her mind rattling.

"If she did, then she is clearly out of her mind," Brienne grimaces. "Or just trying to be kind, I don't know. It just irritated me."

 _Marvellous_.

Why did she say _marvellous_?

Why not strong or _just_ singular or one of a kind or interesting or unique or intimidating?

 _Why_ marvellous?

If you are marvellous, someone has to marvel at you, or so Brienne always understood it.

But who would _ever_ marvel at her?

Jaime looks at her, tilting his head the other way. He spent days and days looking at this woman, either glancing over his shoulder when she had a leash on him, to throw a tease her way, or face to face ever since the leash came off and their eyes collided, and her sapphires bore through him like daggers.

But he is used to them by now. It never dawned on him that others would be caught up in a similar spell, but Olenna is a wise woman, or so it seems. She appears to see the truth others don't see because they can't look past Brienne's bulky body and awkward antics.

Just like it never dawned on Jaime that a compliment, which was likely spoken in all earnest, holding nothing but the truth, would fall on deaf ears with Brienne, who is so used to hearing compliments in mockery that she can't even grasp the possibility of someone finding her just this.

Marvellous.

"Or… she meant it and you are now bothering your dour head sore because you can't take a compliment for what it is," Jaime shrugs.

" _Can't take a compliment for what it is_?" she looks at him with a huge frown. "I can take a compliment if I know it to be one."

"One time I complimented you on your sword skills," he grins.

"As you were trying to kill me," she retorts.

"Fine, given. But once we left Harrenhal, I told you that I was impressed with how you handle a dagger, and you didn't take it for a compliment at all," Jaime goes on.

At some point he wanted to get started on training his left hand and threw daggers against a tree trunk, with shameful results at best. When Brienne told him to stop it, he told her that she couldn't do it better, having to use her left hand instead of her right, and that it required a lot of training.

He really didn't expect her to take a dagger from him, thrust it into her left palm and send it right into the heart of the tree trunk, the dagger singing like a zither. And before Jaime knew it, the compliment spilled out of his mouth, only to have her stomping over to the trunk to retrieve the daggers, telling him that they'd become blunt if he kept going like this.

"In contrast to you, I always understood that I needed two strong sides, which is why I trained my left _and_ my right," she argues.

What is he trying to hint at?

"See? You can't take a compliment. That is the core problem," Jaime argues.

"Compliments are worth nothing," she argues. "Whether you give them or you take them."

"They seem important enough to you to leave you upset," Jaime argues.

"They _irritate_ me. Compliments in general do," she replies sternly, growing uncomfortable, shifting her weight from one foot to the other.

"The blue suits you," he then says simply, leaving Brienne blinking as though she just came up from diving in teal waters.

"What?" she blurts out.

"The blue of your tunic fits you well," he says again.

"You are out of your mind," she shakes her head at his behaviour, but he only shrugs his shoulders, "See? You can't take a compliment. You are incapable of it."

"What if so?" she shrugs. "It's not like there is much to compliment me about."

"You have beautiful eyes," he goes on. Brienne blinks furiously, as though a dagger just struck her deep in the guts, leaving her breathless, voiceless.

What?

Beautiful and marvellous?

Why is the world mocking her with these words so much?

"You are irreplaceable," Jaime says, his face dark with a facial expression Brienne fails to read. What is he saying?

What does he mean with this?

"You really can't take any compliment at all," he shakes his head.

Perhaps her uncertainty is worse than his. And even it isn't, Jaime finds himself wanting to ease that pain out of her, to bring the light back behind her eyes.

Because dim blue, dull blue doesn't suit her at all.

Just like the ornaments are a thing alien to him.

He inches over to her and claims her lips as his at once, pulling her neck down with his good hand as they stand between high bushes, hiding them from view. Brienne stares at him with eyes wide open. Her breath hitches. Her body revolts.

Has the world gone mad?

First Olenna calls her singular and marvellous.

And now Jaime tells her that the blue of her tunic fits her, that her eyes are beautiful, that she is irreplaceable.

And now he kisses her.

Why do royals have to be mirrors?

Brienne finds her mind swimming in blue waters, bathing in the teal sky. Is she under the weather? Is she just having a daydream?

He grins against her teeth, "Still unable to take a compliment, hm?"

"Why are you doing this?" she manages to ask, her body a sole tremor.

"I'm trying to make you take a compliment," he shrugs.

"I don't need you to comfort me," she argues sternly. "I don't need you to tell me lies to make me feel better."

Because lies are misguiding, misleading.

Because they don't fix anything, don't mend what reality already broke.

"On the contrary, you need me to tell you the _truth_ to make you feel better," he argues, claiming her lips again.

The truth that she is uncertain for _no_ reason.

That Lady Olenna only spoke the truth that should have been out in the world for much longer already.

That Jaime should have said it to her already, instead of commenting on her sword or dagger skills.

Because she _is_ marvellous, in her singular way that is anything but convention, reaching beyond the horizon of the general, out into the cobalt world of wonder.

"You are tall."

"You have fire in your eyes, blue fire."

"Your eyes are Valyrian steel."

"Your voice sounds beautiful."

"If you let me, I will marvel at you."

Because maybe that will be enough to wipe out Jaime's uncertainty likewise. He can tell her these truths, because he knows them to be truths, learned them to be truths.

He can wrestle her down.

He is strong enough.

He made her call him Jaime instead of Kingslayer.

So maybe marvelling at her will heal them both in a strange kind of way. Maybe they can serve each other.

Brienne finds her body letting go, allowing Jaime to come closer and closer and closer, past barriers she fostered and built higher than a mountain over the years. Because Jaime is the one man she learned to trust, because they have a truce now, so his words can't be mirrors, can they?

He must be speaking the truth.

Because Brienne marvels at Jaime, for the knight she knows him to be, not the one she only knew as a ghostly figure from some stories, but a man who, maimed, weak, and unarmed, jumped into a bear pit to save a woman who is anything but a fair maiden. She marvelled at his devotion, at his will to return home, at the kindness she never experienced from a man. The strange kind of understanding for her situation. How he made her talk, reveal herself. How he made her sit next to him, said that she was his guest of honour, and meant it. That he chatted her with her during dinner so that she could say something after all, when she found herself yet again incapable of speaking up to people she doesn't know. That he didn't leave her mute.

The mere possibility that he might be marvelling at her, too, for whatever the reason, in whatever the way, is tantalising, leaving her mind swirling like a whirlpool.

And she wants to get lost in that water for reasons she can't explain, can't put into words, into thoughts, but for even more obscurer reasons, she doesn't really care to put them into words, stuff them into boxes of thought. She leaves them twirling in the azure waters of her mind, lets the tide take them away.

When there is suddenly voices ringing out not far from where they are standing, Brienne pulls away at once, looking around like a scared roe. Jaime, out of reflex, holds on to her wrist, fearing that she will ridiculously jump into one of the hedges, which would surely serve as comic relief, but would leave her in the realm of uncertainty again, the realm he wants to pull her out of, so that he can leave those unknown waters as well.

"I think I haven't shown you my weapon collection yet, my Lady. Care to take a look at it?" he says in a louder voice. Brienne frowns, wriggling her eyebrows, her lips curling, eyes shining so much brighter blue in the shadows of the hedges that Jaime can't help but smirk.

She truly is marvellous.

Absolutely singular.

"That was a subtle way for us to go some private place," he mutters. Brienne's eyes open unnaturally wider, so Jaime just takes matters into his own hands… _hand_ , and pulls her along, his grip on her wrist steady but careful enough not to hurt her. Brienne walks behind him as he pulls her away from the source of the voices, "I'm by no means finished with teaching you a lesson about compliments yet."

Because he suddenly finds so many to say that Jaime fears that he won't have the time for them all, as though her fragments, the moment he pressed her lips against hers, fell back in place, leaving her as a whole again, and making him feel more like a whole again in turn.

Jaime suddenly feels certain in his movements, in his actions.

"We could in fact already start – so you have to make _me_ a compliment now," he says, amused, knowing that Brienne is fonder of a challenge than being a mute receiver.

And even if it isn't a challenge for real, Brienne is a chip of the old block, where you try your best to give as much as you take, if not more, where you treat people with kindness instead of scorn and misgiving.

Brienne chews on her lower lip, but then speeds up a little so that their eyes meet, "You don't need the metal hand."

Jaime frowns, but then understands it as a compliment indeed.

Perhaps one of the most wonderful compliments he received ever since he lost his sword hand.

He doesn't need a piece of metal to be complete again, because he is complete, even with a hand missing.

"And even less the ornaments."

Jaime laughs out loud, speeding up a bit in turn, feeling a bit lighter, and a lot more certain.

She is right indeed. He doesn't need the metal hand full of ornaments.

Jaime has someone to marvel at him without it.

Just like Brienne has someone to marvel at her now in turn.

And that wipes out any uncertainty.

Because for as long as they marvel, they can serve, and for as long as they serve each other, they are not fragmented but whole.

For as long as they see each other's value, they are valued.

For as long as they marvel at each other, they are marvelled at.

For as long as they look at each other, they are looked at and after.

For as long as they see each other, they exist the way they are, and not the way conventions try to forge them. They are imperfectly perfect, outside the binaries others set up.

They are singular by being plural, by being together, by fading into each other's uncertainty to fill the spaces missing with their own uncertainty.

They fade into each other's blue.


End file.
